The Presidential Election Campaign Through Social Media Is Mostly Fun: Gen Z Needs Knowledge, Not Just Jogetan

The invitation of young people, Gen Z and Millennials, to exercise voting rights in the election. (Between/Ari Bowo Sucipto)

JAKARTA After the gemoy and santuy games were popularized by Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, now the Anies Bubble phenomenon appears. Although their names are different, they both have the same goal, namely to dredge up the votes of generation Z or Gen Z and millennials in the 2024 Presidential Election (Pilpres).

In the remaining one and a half months of campaign period, each presidential candidate continues to work hard to steal the attention of prospective voters, who are more than 50 percent of young people, including Gen Z. So it's no wonder these presidential candidates compete to play games and use social media platforms that are closely related to these young people.

After the public was shocked by the celebration of Prabowo Subianto at the end of 2023, now in early 2024 the Anies Bubble phenomenon has succeeded in seizing public attention.

Anies Baswedan suddenly campaigned through a live TikTok broadcast that hundreds of thousands of followers watched. This TikTok live immediately made a scene and several moments were immortalized through screen recordings until it was uploaded by several accounts.

Shortly after, the @aniesbubble account appeared on platform X which was busy becoming a public conversation. The account was created in the style of a Korean idol fan account, because it uses hangul in Korean in its profile.

Candidate for vice president number three, Mahfud MD, does not want to be left behind. He also took advantage of live on TikTok social media for the campaign. In his live broadcast, the former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court (MK) held a question and answer session with his followers.

In today's digital era, it must be admitted that using social media is indeed one way to steal the attention of prospective voters who are dominated by novice voters. Based on data from the 2024 Election Fixed Voter List (DPT), 56 percent of the total voters are from Generation Z and Millennials.

The TikTok platform itself is a social media that is quite close to Gen Z. With such great potential from young people, it is not surprising that the presidential and vice presidential candidates are competing to carry out this contemporary campaign to attract the voices of novice voters. This is also agreed by the political communication analyst from Padjadjaran University, Kunto Adi Wibowo.

"To reach or reach out to young people, like it or not, you have to enter the platform where they are," Kunto said, quoting Kompas.com.

Not only Anies and Mahfud, almost all presidential and vice presidential candidates who will fight are indeed trying to attract the attention of young voters through TikTok. Ganjar Pranowo, for example, has always been diligent in uploading videos about his activities with the community on social media.

Meanwhile, the Prabowo-Gibran couple also often upload short videos showing the two dancing with a bubble. Kunto said that light content like this did attract the attention of voters, but only at the beginning of the campaign period.

With a campaign period remaining less than 1.5 months ago, young people actually need more in-depth content regarding the presidential and vice presidential candidates. This information will be taken into consideration by voters to make their choice.

"Moreover, young people are increasingly pressed, there is a must to immediately make choices. Therefore, they need clear, clear information, but it is still conveyed in their own way, in their language, with the values in their community, so that they are closer to them," said Kunto.

"So instead of dancing TikTok, I think it's now more effective live questions and answers and then the young people interacting with genuine, the original, not made up," he said.

Regarding the assumption that social media is able to dredge up the votes of young voters, the Executive Director of Political Parameters, Adi Prayitno, did not dismiss this assumption. However, he reminded that the campaign on social media is only a place for socialization or introducing themselves as Presidential Candidates or Vice Presidential Candidates.

"Everything that the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates do is an effort to suit political cultivation. This is an effort to get political support towards the 2024 presidential election. So everything is done, campaigns on social media, in mediamainstream, including land campaigns such as door-to-door, political marketing that meets the community directly," Adi explained.

Social media is used to grow well, there is confidence that the campaign on social media will give rise to the possibility of winning a fight. Even though it's not that simple, social media is a place to socialize introducing themselves, but its engagement to choose low-average candidates in general," he said.